Mortal Eclipse

by David Brookover

  He needed to find her.

  Nick dressed quickly and ran out into the long hall. He randomly chose a direction and sprinted until he came to a winding, descending staircase. His quick footfalls thumped down the stairs, and the housekeeper met him at the bottom.

  “My, my, Mr. Bellamy, we’re in a big hurry today,” she said disapprovingly.

  He grasped her shoulders. “Where’s Gabriella?” he demanded breathlessly.

  “Why she’s gone.”

  “Where?”

  “I couldn’t tell you. She was in a sick way this morning and informed me that she’d be gone a few days.”

  “And you don’t know where?” He was desperate.

  The front door swung open and Glenna Guttentag wheeled into the front hall in her wheelchair.

  “Why bless me if isn’t Mark Jacobs,” she declared, her black eyes sparkling from a sea of deep wrinkles.

  “Do I know you?” he asked, distracted.

  “Why I used to sit for you when your mama had to work late. She ran a nice, psychic business, she did. She was smart, too. She did handwriting analysis, dream interpretations, psychometry, and even dabbled in spiritual counseling. Come over here and give your Aunty Glenna a hug.”

  “I really don’t have the time for . . .”

  “Oh, you always have time for me, dear,” the elderly witch insisted.

  He marched over and shook her flabby hand. “I’m looking for Gabriella and . . .”

  “Of course you are, dear, but you’ll have to wait. Gabby’s got herself into a bad way. Very sick.” She clucked her tongue. “I warned her, but she refused to listen. You young people! So impetuous.” She cackled. “Not that I wasn’t the same at your age, Mark.”

  “When can I see her? It’s important.”

  “I’m sure it is, but . . .” She let the word dangle.

  “But what?”

  Tears welled in her eyes. “She’s real sick, but I’ll do the best I can by her. I’m a first class witch, you know.”

  He nodded. “She might die?”

  Glenna patted his hand. “Now there, let’s look on the bright side. She’s a fighter, that one.” She wheeled herself closer. “Love can work miracles, young man. Just stick that in your bonnet.”

  He fought the surging grief within him. “I will, Aunty Glenna.”

  “Now move aside and let me go to work. You just go out and catch that bad boy, Thomas, so we can all rest a little easier around here,” she said brightly.

  “Consider it done.”

  Nick found Crow devouring a plate of greasy over-easy eggs, bacon, toast, and hash browns in the vast kitchen. A mug of coffee sent smoke signals into the warm air. Nick grabbed a slice of toast off the plate.

  “Anything yet?” Nick asked, biting into the toast.

  “Nothing. Looks like you had a rough night.”

  “You wouldn’t believe.”

  “Try me.”

  Nick filled a coffee mug, sat on a stool at the counter, and related the previous night’s events, leaving out the identity of his lover. When he finished, Crow’s face was frozen like a cigar store Indian.

  “From meteors to making whoopee, you experienced it all,” Crow said, studying his friend. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were in love.”

  Nick chewed silently.

  “But I never saw a man in love look so damned depressed.”

  “Well, you’re seeing it now.” Nick stood and left.

  It was four thirty that afternoon when Crow took a phone call from a state trooper and relayed the message to Nick. Reverend Curtis and his RV had been spotted about an hour’s drive away on the fairgrounds outside Greenbush. A screen-printed banner announced a revival meeting there at six o’clock that night.

  Nick decided to arm himself with the M9 and combat knife and leave the MP5K at the mansion. It seemed like overkill for a revival. Before they departed, he asked the housekeeper for directions to the main study so he could retrieve the Duneden Dirk, but when he got there, it was missing. He swallowed hard. He wasn’t certain whether the Creeper was all or part destroyer, and he had been counting on that weapon as Creeper-kill insurance. His confidence ebbed some, especially with Gabriella missing.

  Jill met him at the front door and gave him a hug.

  “I’ve spent most of my adult life searching for the Creeper so I could avenge my dad’s murder. Since you probably won’t let me go with you, you’ll have to do it for me. Don’t let me down,” she said and kissed him. “Take that little bit of me with you for good luck.” Tearfully, she turned away and closed the door behind him.

  When Nick climbed behind the wheel of the SUV, Crow unfolded a state map.

  “I thought all you redskin renegades tracked your quarry by reading tree leaves or counting caterpillar stripes or something,” Nick quipped to ease his apprehension as he guided the car along the driveway.

  “That’s a bunch of Sitting-Bull. Modern Indians use maps,” he replied, then pointed to a spot on the map. “There’s Greenbush. Take route 62 to 32, and take a right at 68. There, done.”

  “You armed?”

  He patted his back hip and the sheath on his belt. “A Beretta with extra clips, and of course, ole Skinner.”

  As the SUV sped through the open gates, Nick failed to notice a hundred eyes peering at them from the trees, and one of the squirrels morphing into a crow and quickly flying ahead of the vehicle. He did notice the treacherously black clouds roiling on the western horizon again. Although the sun wouldn’t set for hours, the approaching storm blocked most of the light, producing a quasi-nightfall. Again, he felt strangely uneasy.

  They arrived at Greenbush fairgrounds in less than an hour and immediately spotted the state trooper parked a quarter mile from the revival site. They stopped beside his cruiser and warned him to stay back until waved in. Nick told him that this was an FBI sting, and that Reverend Curtis was wanted in several states for scamming citizens, tax evasion, and running an interstate ministry with the intent to defraud. The square-jawed, brush cut young trooper was duly impressed and nodded soberly. He promised to stand down.

  “The tent’s half full, I’d guess, so be careful. We don’t need a Waco massacre here in Greenbush,” he warned.

  “Jerk,” Nick growled between clenched teeth, and Crow nodded agreement.

  He punched the accelerator, and they swerved between two cars into the muddy parking field surrounding an enormous blue and white striped tent. A banner flapped and snapped in the brisk breeze and read: The Elias Curtis Revival – Miracles Will Happen Tonight!

  “You watch my back,” Nick instructed. “After we enter, take a seat in a middle row, and I’ll deal with Thomas on the stage.”

  “I don’t know,” Crow objected. “I don’t like this. There’s too much magic involved.”

  “He wants me dead, and I want him dead. It’ll be a high noon confrontation. Believe me, he won’t run. Don’t ask; I just know.”

  Nick parted the tent flaps and took a deep breath. “Here goes.”

  As the state patrolman had said, the rows of folding plastic chairs were only half filled. A tall, brown-haired man with a wide jaw and surly expression stood behind a worn podium studying several sheets of paper. The audience murmuring ceased as Nick strode down the center aisle, his M9 holster in full view. The Reverend Curtis glanced up and smiled.

  “At long last, Brother Mark,” Curtis said in a welcome tone. “After what you heard at the Wolfe place, I presume I can dispense with the Nick Bellamy pretense.”

  Nick stepped onto the low wooden stage, his hand hugging the M9. “Dispense with what you want. I’m here to arrest you.”

  Curtis laughed. “Come now, Brother Mark; it’s bad behavior to lie at a revival. You’re here to kill me.”

  Nick bobbed his shoulders. “Have it your way.”

  “You can’t, of course, Brother,” he said, his eyes narrowing.

  “Could you also dispense with the ‘brother’ bit?”

>   Curtis moved around the podium. “Why? It’s appropriate.”

  Nick frowned. “You can knock off the reverend stuff.”

  “But I have. Didn’t they tell you?”

  “They told me a lot.”

  “I mean about us being brothers,” he declared severely.

  Nick’s heart leaped into his throat. Oh God, that’s what Jill had been trying to tell him. Blood is thicker than water, you bastard! She thought he was deliberating concealing information about the Creeper at the airport. And last night, Jill was about to drop the bomb on him when Gabriella silenced her.

  “Brothers?” was all the response Nick’s woozy mind could generate.

  “Twin brothers,” Curtis confirmed. “You and me.”

  “You nearly got me killed at the sacrificial altar when we were kids,” he said accusingly. “Your own brother!”

  It was Curtis’s turn to shrug. “I’m a soldier, a warrior, not a bleeding heart. I do what’s necessary to survive.”

  “Then Valerie Jacobs wasn’t my mother?”

  He laughed again. “She was your adopted mother. After we were born, father saw that you were a puny, normal baby, a Mortal Eclipse disposable. But he didn’t kill you, because he was curious to see how you grew up. If you exhibited any of the warrior tendencies that you and I were bred for, he’d have two killers for the price of one. So he handed you over to a local, so he could keep an eye on you. But, of course, Joe Ellis screwed up that scenario.”

  The murmuring increased among the people present in the audience.

  “Then who are our parents?” Nick asked, as his hand slowly curled around the M9 handle.

  “Hollis and Johanna Danforth. She died giving birth to us. At least that was what Father told me, but deep down, I think he murdered her.”

  Nick pulled the gun. “Either come with me now, or I pull the trigger.”

  The Reverend Elias Curtis form thickened, then grew taller. Within seconds, a huge, brawny man-lizard towered above Nick. Thomas’s yellow hourglass eyes blazed anger, and his protruding mouth dripped thick saliva.

  Nick fired, but Thomas swiftly dissolved into a diluted form of himself, a whitish apparition. A wraith. The bullet passed through his airy body without injury.

  Thomas laughed, a hollow soulless roar, unlike Reverend Curtis’s human chortle.

  “You’ve just witnessed mortal eclipse,” he roared. “The change from a mortal to an invincible beast, one foot in this dimension and the other foot in the old dimension, yet taking solid form in neither. Not even daddy-dearest can pull off this stunt. The bottom line here is that I cannot be killed, Mark.”

  Nick’s wraith-like twin brother bent close to him. “But you, on the other hand, can be.”

  Screams from stampeding people and the clatter of toppling chairs added to the chaotic bluster churning in Nick’s mind. How was he going to kill this inhuman thing? Why couldn’t he straddle dimensions like his twin? How could this monster inherit all the supernatural genes and he only the human ones? This dilemma, probably the last one he’d experience in his life, was at once exasperating and terrifying.

  Nick backed off the stage, his useless gun raised and aimed at Thomas’s scaly chest. “Crow, get the hell out of here!” he shouted. “Tell Rance exactly what we’re up against.”

  “I’m staying,” Crow replied defiantly.

  “I just gave you an order! It won’t help anyone if we’re both killed here. Now go.”

  Despite his ingrained instinct to stay and fight, Crew realized that Nick was right. If Rance were aware of Thomas’s powers, then he and the government might be able to devise a weapon to destroy it. Reluctantly, he backpedaled toward the entrance.

  Thomas’s image flickered briefly, then rapidly solidified. Without warning, Thomas coiled his lizard legs and sprang at his twin! But before he landed a lethal blow, the monster’s throat was ripped away by invisible hands.

  Nick wheeled to the side to avoid Thomas’s flying body as it thumped dead on the dirt floor. His jaw and mouth worked up and down, but there was no air to propel words. Finally, Thomas’s head slumped into death.

  Crow rushed to his friend. “Just how the hell do you suppose that happened?” he asked.

  “Gabriella,” Nick replied, as he examined the gaping tear in Thomas’s throat.

  A crow cawed behind them, then a cheerful voice said, “I’m sorry to disappoint you.”

  They pivoted to see Hollis Danforth standing behind them, a leer splitting his pasty face.

  “I want to thank you, Nick, or whatever you’re going to call yourself for the brief remainder of your life, for leading me to your brother. I have been trying to locate Thomas since his escape all those years ago. You remember, that was the night that meddling Joe Ellis or Sandlin, whichever you prefer, saved your life at the altar. My dagger was just seconds from piercing your heart.”

  “You were the hooded priest?”

  He bowed slightly. “The one and the same. It’s been my place for hundreds of years.”

  That number didn’t phase Nick. He already knew it. “And you’d kill your own flesh and blood,” Nick exclaimed, totally disgusted with his father.

  “Experiments, not sons. That’s all any of you freaks are to me.”

  Nick wanted to jump Danforth and choke the life from him, but he knew he’d be no match for a destroyer. “So now what?” Nick asked instead.

  “Now your friend goes bye-bye.” Danforth waved his hand and Crow disappeared.

  “Where is he?” Nick demanded.

  “Back at the Wolfe estate where he’ll die with the rest.”

  “Jesus, you’re more of a monster than Thomas!”

  “Time to go.”

  “What about Thomas’s body?”

  “Let them find it. Maybe that will satisfy their curiosity and keep Osborne and the others away from me. I have a Presidential election to win.”

  “And what happens to me, Dad?”

  “Well, son, I’m afraid that you’ll be sacrificed at the altar like you should have been thirty years ago.”

  Danforth waved both arms and they vanished, leaving behind the bleeding corpse of the Mortal Eclipse warrior. The end of the vile project.

  There would be no revival of either that night. Or ever.

  Chapter 58

  A mountainous thunderhead with rumbling tidal waves of angry gray foam threatened Duneden. Lightning again cleaved the still air as Danforth’s army of squirrels scampered to the ground and altered their small forms to mammoth, grotesque fiery demons. They had received telepathic orders from their master: destroy the Wolfe mansion and everyone inside.

  Several Duneden joggers scrambled off the sidewalk to avoid the ten twelve-foot scaly fiends with arched, flaming backs. Their frightening appearance included a pair of bony spikes protruding from triangular skulls, large ear holes at the sides, three white lidless eyes, and a spherical mouth filled with thinly tapered black teeth. Their flaming bodies bobbed and shook as they impatiently awaited their leader’s attack order.

  The most grotesque of the fiends pushed through its evil battalion to the front where the white flames on its back changed to a bluish red. The others charged the estate like a runaway stampede, grunting and shrieking and blowing white-hot flames from their mouths.

  The gargoyle figures crouching on the estate walls and the manor’s gutters suddenly sprang to life and unfurled their great wings. Stretched to their full heights, Gabriella’s protectors glided down upon the invaders. Their claws easily shredded the thin, smooth flesh of the demons, but there were too many demons. They scorched the gargoyles with their fiery breath, and Gabriella’s guardians flitted about the stormy blackness like giant fireflies, finally erupting into fireballs and plunging to the ground.

  The fire-fiends lumbered up the hill and closed on the manor, bathing its exterior in a wall of flames. The giant limbs of the closest oaks twisted away from the hissing flames, their bark dissolving to a glistening green skin. The lower
trunks morphed to burly legs as the limbs near the top changed to thick, sinewy forearms with menacing claws, long scaled necks, and horned, armored skulls with mouths trickling liquid fire. The oaks became four dragons, uprooted themselves, and attacked the fire-fiends with scorching blasts.

  But Danforth had done his homework on Gabriella’s defenses. Instead of being consumed by the dragons’ fiery breath, the fiends thrived and grew larger and more powerful. Two of the dragons were reduced to yowling cinders by the demons while the other pair retreated to the perimeter of the estate, uncertain how deal with such creatures.

  Crow and Jill watched the battle from a third floor window with increasing horror. The demons had defeated the gargoyles and two of the dragons. What chance did mere humans have against such invincible, supernatural invaders?

  Crow stepped back as a tongue of flame licked the window and bubbled the painted trim. The demons’ grunts and shrieks were raucous, and smothered the tinkling of shattered glass downstairs. Jill moved close to Crow.

  “We’re as good as dead!” she cried.

  He hugged her tightly, fighting the urge to agree. What would his grandfather do in this bleak situation? The window glass cracked and exploded from the rising inferno. The drapes ignited and quickly carried the ravenous, swirling flames to the ceiling. Smoke choked the bedroom and enveloped Jill and Crow.

  He glanced around. “There’s never a fire extinguisher around when you need one.”

  Before his tearing eyes, a large fire extinguisher appeared in his hands. There was no time for questions. He immediately sprayed the licking flames, and the clouds of white powder smothered them in short order.

  He grabbed Jill’s arm. “C’mon, we’re going downstairs.”

  She struggled away. “But they’re down there!”

  “We’ve got to save the house. Glenna and Gabriella are in here somewhere. We can’t let them down! C’mon,” he said and pulled her with him.

  Jill wished for and magically received a fire extinguisher, and they both descended the stairwell, fighting the endless flames. After twenty minutes of wading through choking, blinding black smoke, Jill collapsed against the wall.